The Life of Food

I would be busy anyway, but adding in new food preparation routines has only increased the amount of time I spend in the kitchen and decreased the amount of time I can blog. My travel blog has really gone by the way side and now the time has come to renew my domain name. I probably will because I have so much I would love to say but I am hesitating.

I have been inundated with recipes and blog sites specific to those with gluten allergies. Now I have so much I need to organize it. Instead, I'm just ignoring most of my email until I have time to sort through it. The gluten-free diet is not nearly as difficult at home as I thought it would be; eating out and trying to eat with others is another thing entirely.

Meanwhile, I have been doing the Clean Program which makes gluten-free diet look like a walk in the park. I got a head start by giving up coffee for Lent. As difficult as it is, I lost 5 lbs in the first week, and more significantly finally got below any weight I've been at since my first pregnancy 8+ years ago. This has brought about renewed motivation so I almost decided to haul my blender when we went to the funeral of my great-aunt and family reunion in eastern Washington this last weekend. But I passed and took a 3-day hiatus from the bulk of the diet. Fortunately, my motivation served to keep me away from the dessert table and to stick to small helpings. Seconds once, on salad.

Our time with family was really wonderful. My great-aunt was nearly 94 with severe dementia. The funeral was a reminder of who she had been, the person most of us hadn't seen in many years. And my second cousin made a table of photos with candles and flowers of all the other people we have lost over the years, including my grandpa and cousin Shannon. It was a beautiful memorial and I enjoyed time with my second cousins. Kyrie, especially, really enjoyed her third cousins. There were five little girls, all within a year of each other, and they had a wonderful time. None of my cousins made it but I did get to see an aunt and uncle and my grandma. The three of them are planning a trip to Ireland this summer and so I am living vicariously by giving them suggestions for the trip.

My aunt was praised for her cooking by the men of the family, despite one son saying she really didn't like to cook. I wonder if the time and effort that cooking required in an earlier era was both limiting and allowed for a certain creativity lacking from many of our modern lives. And while I hope that my family will find my cooking appealing, I doubt my wonderful gluten-free cooking will come up at my funeral.